For some reason, I don’t undergo the rapturous waves of
joy that seem to be commonplace when people watch Pixar’s animated features.
Their Toy Story films’ charm evaporated shortly after they began and
left my head hurting from a combination of aural loudness and excessive camera
motion. A Bug’s Life was cute enough (or, perhaps, too cute), but was
nowhere near as original or engaging as Dreamworks’ Antz. It was a bit
of a stunner, then, when the first act of Monsters Inc., their latest
film, captured me. Whatever cynicism I had in me started to melt. The only
complaint that I could really muster was that the monsters’ homeland looked a
bit too close to modern day America (as opposed to a truly original, magical
alternate world a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’s ToonTown.)

The cartoon’s premise is wonderfully clever. It follows a
group of monsters that work for a power plant as they are made to scare children
(whose screams generate energy for the monsters) by entering portals into their
bedroom closets. Times are troubled, however, since children are becoming more
and more desensitized to the monsters’ attempts to scare, due to media
desensitization. It seems monster-land is undergoing a California-style energy
crisis, and roaming blackouts are quickly becoming a possibility. This is great
stuff! The film’s visuals don’t attempt to stun us with realism, but instead
create an attractive alternate to stylized cel-based animation. The camera
doesn’t spin wildly just because it can, like it did in the Toy Story
films. This cartoon is “shot” almost like a normal movie.

The film’s setup is never delivered on, however. After
about a half hour of goodness, plot rears its ugly head. A child’s entrance
into the monster’s homeland creates a sense of hysteria (one that makes
absolutely no sense by the end of the film). The monsters attempts to rid
themselves of this child take up the remainder of the film, and nothing involved
here is nearly as inspired as the film’s setup. The kid they are plagued with
is insufferably cute and isn’t really a character so much as a prop (and an
inconsistent one at that… her actions seem to only affect the surroundings
when humor is sure to ensue). A few subplots, including a government conspiracy,
emerge, but they don’t seem to make much sense. It’s a shame that the
filmmakers use the film’s last half to ignore most of the rules that they
inventively created in the film’s first half, as the film began to establish
an almost convincing charm. I don't mind flights of fancy in a film, but I do
like a consistent tone. This film fails to deliver one. As the lack of logical
and character consistency continued, this cartoon became less and less
likable to me. Still, it's a mildly pleasurable diversion if such things don't
bother you.